Hey, we're jumping back into your podcast feed to bring you a bonus episode because we love you. Today, I'm sitting down with Matt Boling to ask him if Flourish Coaches work with churches outside of the Presbyterian Church of America or PCA. Spoiler alert if your church is not a PCA church but you still need a new lead pastor, we want to work with you to help you through your transition. But even with that spoiler alert, I still want you to listen to this episode. Hey Matt, hey Jer. So this is another bump. We're going to drop this in as sort of a bonus episode, but I wanted to ask you you've talked a lot about the PCA and you have spoken to this, but I wanted to give you an opportunity to speak to it more Will Flourish assign pastors transitional pastors outside of the Presbyterian Church of America?

In America. Jared Presbyterian Church in America. It's a common misconception.

Do you have any idea how important that little distinction is to someone who is in the PCA?

Yes highly.

That's what I said, Okay thank you, good Continue.

The easy answer is yes, we absolutely will. So we actually have an affiliation agreement with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church and we're an approved vendor for them to place transitional pastors in the EPC. I'm in dialogue right now, actually, with an evangelical free church in Florida about having one of our transitional pastors join them. I think I'm in in dialogue with another church too, besides that one that I had a conversation with the other day. So, basically, what I? Because the because the PCA is our largest, the largest place where we place people, and they are the pastors that I have recruited.

What I'll commonly tell a church that's outside of our setting, particularly if they're not Presbyterian, is hey, I can place a guy there.

We should just both have an understanding that he's not going to come in and hammer on a particular doctrine that you guys don't believe and that you shouldn't expect him to teach a doctrine that you have that he doesn't believe.

So, for example, in an evangelical free church and this varies greatly between free churches, so I'll just say that at the outset for some of them, dispensationalism is a much more passionate topic than others this particular church that I was talking to this past week that's not been a big topic for them. Okay, good, because a PCA transitional pastor coming in is not going to be able to authentically preach on dispensationalism because it's not the prevalent end times view in our setting, and I think similarly. I think if a guy goes in and say it's an evangelical free church for sake of argument and they only in that church baptize professing believers, well my guy's not going to go in and start telling them how awful they are because they don't do infant baptism right. Those are not things that are critical to the ongoing health of the church that we're trying to restore in this transition. Our design is to try and help the church restore to biblical health so they can go forward with a new long-term pastor.

So you don't have a theological gatekeeper to say unless you subscribe to these doctrines and we agree on all these points there's not a workable platform here.

No. But what I do do is I give the church the freedom to say no to a certain guy and I give my guys the freedom to say no. So in, for example, in our partnership with the EPC, there are some churches in the EPC that have female elders and there are some churches in the EPC that do not. So for a PCA guy who is by conviction complementarian, where there are no women elders for some of my guys going to a setting where there's a woman serving on the EPC session, I basically told them, I said I will not compel you to do that. If you're not comfortable with that, I'm fine. I don't want to even put you in that spot. Other guys are kind of like well, I think I can work with that For the sake of that church. I think I can work with that, and so I want people's consciences to be free and clear.

Does someone have to subscribe to an essentially reformed position?

No, I don't think so, but I think that the church that is going to have this transitional pastor at it, they need to know where this guy's coming from, and if that's going to make them uncomfortable, then we're probably not a good match for them.

Anyway, okay, so goodness of fits, one of the things that's really important here. Yep, absolutely so. Within the denominations okay, you've spoken to those. What about extra denominationally or non-denominationally? Have you worked with non-denominational churches? Would you work outside of the groups that we've already talked about?

Yeah, I was just in dialogue with the church. I don't think we're going to end up working with them, but I was in dialogue with a church in Texas that was non-denominational and I think I have no problem. All of our stuff is cued, all of our materials are cued towards conservative evangelical churches. So that's what we have built around, even if we've recruited staff members from within the PCA and so no, if the church is a conservative evangelical, Bible-believing church, then yeah, I think that we could work with them, so long as they know where this guy's coming from and we've got clear expectations both ways.

King James only.

No, sir, nice try, though I was not expecting that, dear listener.

I probably won't make the cut, but that was worth it. Is there anything else that you want people to know about? Any concerns that you have heard received responded to about the denominational question or the fit question that we haven't talked about?

Yeah, I would just say to somebody who's listening to this I would rather you give me the shot of having a first conversation with you before you just by default say, oh, it's a PCA organization. We may be a PCA in background, but we've serviced lots of churches that are not PCA and I would love the opportunity to talk to you. And if we're not a match, we're not a match, but I know that we can match well outside of the PCA, and so if you would give us that opportunity, we would appreciate it.

And let me just go ahead and make sure that we say that as clearly and as forcefully as possible Matt wants you to call him. He will give you the hour for free and if Flourish is not a good match, he will point you to someone who can be a better match based on the conversation that you have, because that's his heart. So with that, thank you, matt. Appreciate your time, man. Matt Faircloth, yep. Very welcome.

Thanks for listening to the Church Renewal Podcast from Flourish Coaching. Flourish exists to set ministry leaders free to be effective wherever God has called them. We believe that there's only one fully sufficient reason that this day dawned, jesus is still gathering his people and he's using his church to do it. When pastors or churches feel stuck, our team of coaches refresh their hope in the gospel and help them clarify their strategy. If you have questions or a need, we'd love to hear from you.

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